Archives for September 2016

The playoffs are a certainty. NYC beat Chicago and the other dominoes fell properly this week so NYCFC has clinched a playoff spot, as did Toronto and the Red Bulls, all at the same time when the Red Bulls beat Montreal. I do not find myself particularly excited by this. I think the reason is that it has been a near certainty for 2-3 months, and a true (if not mathematical) certainty for 2-3 weeks. Also the specific result that put the Bluebirds over the top was a bad result for the team in all other respects. NYCCF is in a battle with the Red Bulls for Second Place in the conference and a first round playoff bye. The Pigeons really need the Red Bulls to drop points. That this RB win happened to clinch a playoff spot for NYCFC, which I considered a given anyway, was not even bittersweet. I just wanted NYRB to lose. Finally, with the other results this weekend NYC would have clinched once Columbus beat New England in the last game of the week Sunday night. With all that, I haven’t lost sight of how great it is the team is doing well and comfortably made the playoffs in its second year.

Apart from that Red Bull win it was overall it was a good weekend of results for NYCFC. The problem is that the most immediate concern is the Red Bulls and second place. Every other team we are trying to catch dropped points but they still seem hard to reach.

The Red Bulls and NYCFC won and everyone else dropped points. The Galaxy lost, and every other team drew. NYCFC is likely to lose the tie-breakers to everyone but LAG, so has to finish ahead on points to finish ahead. As this chart shows, even if NYCFC wins out its remaining 3 games, they need Dalls to drop 6 points, Colorado 7, and Toronto 4. The team that’s in reach and has the most immediate reward is the Red Bulls. Also, it is unclear if finishing ahead of the West Conference teams will have any helpful results. A spot in the CONCACAF Champions League is — maybe — up for grabs but there are so many movings parts to that calculus it seems too remote. NYC needs to win and get help, or it will likely finish third in the conference, and my disappointment with that prospect is clearly of the moment. pre-season I would have taken it gladly. It also seemed wildly optimistic on June 3, when the team had just lost at home to RSL, the Home record was 1-3-5, and the PPG overall PPG was 1.20. By the way, I feel much more optimistic than this post is coming out.

The what needs to be done chart can start losing possibilities at the bottom with every new point:

This chart is officially meaningless to NYCFC but goes up for reference anyway. DC United is dragging the playoff line up just a bit.

DC United is dragging the playoff line up just a bit. They have lost only once in their last 10 games, over which their PPG is 1.50 compared to 1.10 the rest of the season. They are the only one of NYCFC’s remaining opponents over the playoff line at the moment. But, the other two are also playing their best ball of the season, unfortunately. The Dynamo, who host NYCFC this coming Friday, are at 1.40 PPG in the last 10 compared to 0.95 before that, and Columbus is also 1.40 over the last 10 compared to a truly dismal 0.83 before that.

NYC has two road games left and has not won Away since July 17 at Montreal. NYC’s only remaining home game is against Columbus which is the only East Conference team NYCFC has never beaten. IF NYCFC finishes strong some negative streaks will end.

Montreal’s maximum point number is 50. DCU sits at 49. NYCFC have 48 points today. One NYCFC win, or Impact or DCU loss, and NYCFC clinches finishing at least in Fourth Place and a home playoff game in the first round of the playoffs.

Four games left in the MLS regular season for NYCFC, and fans of the team are hoping it can turn things around. Yet they’re not really doing poorly. They’re just not doing as well as we hoped they would. The BlueBirds’ high point was after Game 19, which saw them win game 4 of a 4-game win streak. The PPG at that point was 1.58 for the year, and after a terrible start, saw them go 7-2-2 over the next 11 for 2.09 PPG over that period. Over the most recent 11 games they are 4-3-3 for 1.36 PPG. That is a drop, but it’s not terrible. It’s 0.01 worse than what Philadelphia — sitting right behind them in the standings — has done all year. It qualifies for the playoffs in both conferences. But it is obviously a big falloff from that high. NYCFC fans convinced themselves — I think — that the team was better than it was, that the early start was a combination of new players, a new system, and bad luck, and that the 11-game run after that was the new reality. But sports is often a series of streaks that can have no particular relationship to cause and effect. NYCFC had a bad start, a great mid-season run, and is now playing in between those two poles. At the end of the day you are what your record says you are, and right now NYCFC is a third place team. That doesn’t mean they will not rise or fall in the next four games. They still have a chance to make a run higher, or drop further.

NYC is tied with NYRB on points, but sits in third while the Red Bulls are in second because of the second tie-breaker which is Goal Differential. The Red Bulls lead that by 13 points. The Red Bull Wedding is not by itself the difference makes at the moment. If the Red Bulls won that game 1-0 their GD would be 6 and NYCFC would be at 5, so NYRB would still be ahead. But NYCFC would be in striking distance so it still has a significant impact. NYCFC has to finish ahead of the Red Bulls on points to finish ahead of them. It does not help that NYRB has 3 of its last 4 games at home where the team won 10 of 14 tries this year. NYCFC will probably need to win at Home and Away to finish ahead of them.

Playoff Clinching Update: Dallas FC became the first team to clinch a playoff spot this weekend. By my calculations NYC can do so this weekend. A win alone will ensure NYC finishes ahead of Chicago and Columbus. DC and Orlando play each other, and NYC clinches over the loser, or clinches over both if it is a tie. So a tie does the deal and has NYC finishing ahead of 4 teams for a playoff clinch. Similarly, a New England tie or loss to Columbus has NYC clinching ahead of New England.

Teams NYCFC has never beaten:

Columbus

SKC

RSL

Dallas

Three West Conference teams that NYCFC has only played twice, and Columbus. NYC is 0-2-2 0.50 PPG against Columbus. NYCFC hosts Columbus on the last day of the season. Columbus had 3 wins in its first 22 games this year (one of those against NYCFC) and now has 3 in its last 6. Great.

The East Conference Playoff line is holding down at 40-41 points.

The what-we-need-to-do chart did not lose any possibilities this week, but it will take 4 wins to keep 57 a possibility.

Splits:Home Record 6-3-6 1.60 PPG
Away Record 6-6-3 1.40 PPG

East Record 7-7-7- 1.33 PPG
West Record 5-2-2 1.89 PPG

Charts Keep Rollin’
Finally, thanks to commenter FootyLovin for the following. Here is a chart comparing the 5-game rolling PPG average for NYCFC for 2015 and 2015. He thought of it, inspired by my 4-game block chart. I did switch to 5-game rolling because I think it’s a better measure than 4 games. I only used 4-game blocks to have more data points in the other chart.

Just wow at the similarities. The team is clearly better, but the season path has so many points of equivalence.

With 4 games to go I decided to pull out the NYCFC 2015 vs. 2016 charts again, and I decided to add one new chart.

I’ve posted the top 2 charts a few times before. They each have flaws, but together I think they provide enough information to draw some conclusions. The problem of the first chart is that the lines only go up or stay flat. Over the course of a season every team will seem to progress, with the differences being a matter of scale and speed. The issue with the second chart is that every new game has a lesser effect on the chart than the games before it did (when they were each the latest game). After game 3 each game including the latest is worth 33.3% of the total. After game 30 each game is worth 3.3%. So you will usually see progressions like the ones above where there are some big moves early then the lines flatten out unless there are big streaks like winning or losing 4 out of 5 or so.

Despite those limitations, you can tell that NYCFC’s 2 seasons started out the same, with an extended slump, but that they broke out of it sooner in 2016. You can also tell that in 2016 NYCFC has had 2 stretches of above-average play that have largely driven most of its success this season. You can also see that the 2015 team had one stretch from games 14-18 that was responsible for the best part of that year.

But the new chart really shows all this better. I split the season into mostly 4 game blocks. Because 34 is divisible only by 17 and 2, it’s impossible to do that exactly so the split is theee 4-game blocks, followed by a 5-game set. That’s 17 games and half the season, so repeat it to round it out. We are through 7 of the 8 blocks, and this chart makes everything I described above even more clear. Both the 2015 and 2016 teams started poorly. 2016 pulled out sooner and more sharply. 2015 NYCFC had one stellar stretch at the end of the first half of the season followed by a long, painful decline, while the 2016 team had 2 very good blocks in which it averaged more than 2 PPG. Since then NYCFC 2016 has been muddling through the remainder of the season at about its average rate of success. The last block is five games and will probably determine whether the team is viewed as limping to the playoffs or going in hot.

Everything in the Interconference Play posts is presented from an East Conference point of view. E.G., a Home game means the East team is Home.

This week two games, 1 home and 1 away.
East Record 0-1-1

Season To Date
East Record 29-37-30
At Home 22-9-17 (48 games)
On Road 7-28-13 (48 games)
Goal Differential -12
East Points 117
West Points 141

It seems the biggest difference between the East and West in head-to-head play is that the West wins twice as many home games as it draws (28-13), while the East wins a few more home games than it draws (22-17). The West loses less at home as well, but only by 2 games (9/7). The real difference makes is that the West gets 3 points playing the East at home and the East gets only 1 point at home too many times.

What a bad week of results. The only real positive was that DC United pulled back a tie after being down 2-0 to the Red Bulls. Thanks to that NYC is tied with RB and not 2 points behind. The Philadelphia/Montreal tie was good, but neither team seems much of a threat. Toronto’s win in Chicago ends TFC’s “tough”schedule stretch in which they had to play 4 of 5 on the road before finishing with 5 of 6 at home. Before that 4 0f 5 stretch started I wrote“If TFC gets just 7 or 8 points in their next 5 tough games they are in very good shape even if NYC gets 18-20 more points overall.TFC is very likely to get 12 points in their last 6, with 5 of them at home against weak road teams. So 8 + 12 would mean 20 points in their last 11 and 56 total. NYC needs to go 6-2-2 to beat that. That’s doable, but I’d feel a lot better if TFC gets say, 5 or 6 points in the next 5 games. ”

Well, TFC got 10 points in those 5 games, oddly winning 3 of the 4 Away and losing at Home. In that same period NYC earned only 7 points in 5 games. Now TFC sites 2 points up plus a game in hand. First place seems extremely unlikely. But who knows. Maybe TFC collapses at home. I would not count on it but this season is very unpredictable so it would not be a shock either.

The larger concern is being tied with the Red Bulls with 5 games to go. We both have 3 Home Games and 2 Away. At this point we are both strong at Home and weak Away. We could easily finish tied. The first tiebreaker is Number of Wins. We are currently even and with 5 games to go it is likely that if we finish tied the two teams will still be tied on Wins. Yes, NYC could go 3-2-0 while RB goes 2-0-3 but more likely we stay tied on Wins. Then the nest tiebreaker is Goal Differential. Here, there is no hope. RB has a +12 GD and NYC sits at -1. The odds of that changing while the teams remain tied on Points and Wins is effectively zero. Even if NYC gets 5 wins and RB gets 5 losses it is not so very likely to change. The point being that NYC needs to finish ahead of RB on points to finish ahead of RB, to finish second, and to get the first-round playoff bye. Barring a convenient NY-RB collapse, NYC will need to resume winning on the road.

NYC’s poor Away form means the team has not had even a solid 2-game streak of good results since winning 4 in a row in a streak that straddled June and July. In the 10 games since then the best “streak” for NYC was 2 draws in a row as the results have been L-W-L-W-D-D-W-L-W-L. Whether NYC can change its road results back to positive will likely determine where it finishes. Getting either 4 or 6 points in the final 2 Away games would be huge. Even getting 3 could be a difference maker.

The East Conference PPG Playoff line is still pointing in the low 40s, with no indication it will move anywhere near last year’s line of 49.

Even if Orlando goes on a streak, Montreal seems stuck in a mid-40s range and is drifting lower right now, so that is probably a ceiling on this year’s line.

Finally, and sadly, I had to cross out 3 possibilities at the top of the What-We-Need-To-Do chart.

It is impossible to get 62, 60,, or 58 points. A record of 5-0-0 would get 59, not shown on the chart. That is the team’s maximum right now.

UPDATE: I forgot to add the following earlier.

With the loss to NE Revs, NYC’s record against the East drops to a very mediocre 7-7-7 for 1.33 PPG. Against the West the Blue Birds are 5-2-1 and 2.0 PPG.

The Home Record is 6-3-5 1.64 PPG and the Away record drops to 6-6-3 1.40 PPG.

Finally, the loss also means limited headway on the playoff clinching front. A win would have guaranteed that NYC finishes ahead of the Revs. Instead it still takes a minimum of two games of perfect results to clinch over the Revs, as well as Chicago and Columbus. It will take at least 3 good game results to do the same for DCU or Orlando.

Everything in the Interconference Play posts is presented from an East Conference point of view. E.G., a Home game means the East team is Home.

This week two games, 1 home and 1 away.
East Record 0-2-0

Season To Date
East Record 29-36-29
At Home 22-9-16 (47 games)
On Road 7-27-13 (47 games)
Goal Differential -11
East Points 116
West Points 137

Ugh. After ending an 11-game unbeaten streak last week, the East is 0-3-0.
There are only 6 interconference games remaining this season, and NYCFC is in 2 of them: Dallas at Home and Houston Away. Over 94 games the West now has 7 more wins. I would love to get that down to 5 to minimize the sniping about how bad the East is. A 5 win differential over 100 games spread across 10 teams on each side does not signify top to bottom dominance. In the other direction, I want even more to keep the differential below 10 for the same reason. The Red Bulls and Toronto have no interconference games remaining so I have no difficulty rooting for the East the rest of the way. Philadelphia and Montreal both have one game left but I think NYC can sustain their lead even if they win those games.

NYCFC are back in first place on points but still behind Toronto, who did not play, in PPG. This was a less than stellar week for results, largely because the Red Bulls got a win on the road in Vancouver. The competition to finish in the top 2 and sit out the first round of the playoffs is now very tight. NYC has 44 points but both the Red Bulls and TFC sit at 43. TFC also has a game in hand and 5 of its 7 remaining games at home. So despite NYC being technically in 1st place the club needs help — in the form of other teams beating TFC — to stay ahead of them. The other increased worry are the Red Bulls, who are a point behind and even on games played, but gained an advantage for themselves by finally winning a road game for the first time since the Red Bull Wedding on May 21. It was only their second Away win all year. This was big because they now have 4 of their remaining 6 games at Home. They last lost at Home on April 9 and won 9 out of 10 since then. If they win out at home (4 of 6) and NYC wins out at home (3 of 6) they leapfrog over NYC subject to a minimal likelihood of Away draws making a difference for NYC.

As a result, if TFC does not collapse at least a little due to Giovinco’s injury, and if the Red Bulls stay true to their Home form, then NYC probably needs both to win out at Home and to get another Road win to stay in the top 2 spots. NYC’s last Away win was July 17 against montreal and they have only one Away win in their last 6 tries. Streaks seem inevitable while they are happening, but they all end, and NYC needs to end its modest winless road streak. It would also help if the Red Bulls undefeated home streak ends.

Here are the PPG standings mentioned in the first sentence and the projected finish based on pure multiplication over 34 games. As I have previously noted, this late in the season the final projection becomes rather meaningless as a rather brief run of unexpected good or bad results can alter the finish considerably. I post it largely for archival purposes.

You can see the tightness of the first 3 spots, a slight gap to the next two, and then the bigger gap to the remaining 5 teams vying for the last playoff spot.

Playoff Clinching Update: NYC can guarantee finishing ahead of New England in a minimum of 2 games. SInce they play each other this weekend, that games counts as 2 and a win by NYC would ensure that NYC cannot finish below the Revs and mathematically has clinched finishing above 10th place. The remaining bottom teams have played fewer games and so it will take a minimum of 3 games for NYC to ensure finishing ahead of Chicago and Columbus, and 4 games to finish ahead of DCU and Orlando. Once NYC has mathematically achieved its magic number for 4 of those 5 teams it has guaranteed itself a playoff spot. Any non-win by NYC delays this as does any positive result by these teams. It seems likely NYC will clinch a playoff spot in the next 2-4 weeks at most. Regardless, the playoffs are a virtual certainty right now.

Here is the updated chart of what some possible finishes get NYC in terms of a final points total.

Effectively, the 60-point mark of excellence will require no more losses, as does even 58. A finish in the range of 55-57 seems most likely, but as noted, an unusual run of good or bad results pushes higher or lower. It would be great if the team could return to its Away form of May through mid-July when it won 5 of 7 Away games. That run defines NYC’s success this year. It is the reason a playoff spot is all but guaranteed and a top 2 finish is in sight.

The anomalies persist: if NYC did as well against the somewhat weaker East as it does against the West it would be running away with the COnference. Similarly, NYC’s home record is not nearly as impressive as the Away record, even though they are moderately better at Home. Normal teams are much, much, better at Home than Away. Here is a look at the East Conference Home PPG standings to bring that into focus:

NYC sits in Fifth Place, barely ahead of the real-life 9th Place Chicago Fire. NYC’s record of only 1 win in its first 9 Home games kept them from running away with the conference.

Season To Date
East Record 29-34-29
At Home 22-8-16 (46 games)
On Road 7-26-13 (46 games)
Goal Differential -6
East Points 116
West Points 131

The Galaxy win over the Crew last night broke an 11-game undefeated streak by the East.
There are only 8 interconference games remaining this season, and NYCFC is in 2 of them: Dallas at Home and Houston Away. Over 92 games the West has 5 more wins, which is not nothing, but also signifies something much less than complete dominance to date.